Apparently, within the next two weeks Google is planning to release a new version of Google Chrome that will include the ability to sync bookmarks between different computers.

“The synchronisation will be managed through a Google account”, said software engineer on the Chrome team, Tim Steele in a mailing list posting on Friday.

Sync or synchronisation is an act of causing software to operate simultaneously. So Google wants to synchronise Chrome with bookmarking software, much like our favourite bookmarking site del.icio.us.com

Synchronizing will help one instance of Chrome to behave more like another, for example being able to retrieve more easily the address of a website that a user already visited on another computer

However Peter Kasting, another Chrome programmer, would’ve liked Chrome to have “history/visited link/omnibox syncing than bookmarks,” he said in a posting. Now if they do sync passwords and browser history, it’ll be quite a risk.

Privacy?

Now I have not used Google Chrome yet (so this not making a promo for it because they’re not paying me) but the issues of privacy are quite pertinent.

There are millions of users that are already storing information via search history on Google’s servers. With Chrome’s synchronization feature, however, you would also store a complete record of all of your comings and going on other parts of the Internet on Google’s servers.

Not so long again I discovered that there are search engines, like Dutch based search engine ixquick, that do not store data.

I’m sure you’re thinking this is not new. Indeed it isn’t, in fact there are companies that do the same as Google Chrome, such as the likes of Xmarks, Bookmarksync, Netvous etc. However, what is important to think about is how this will affect us in future and what is means for future innovations.

Core message

This week’s post on Chrome raises some interesting pointers. In a networked personal and business computing environment, users want to be able to enjoy a similar experience regardless of the computer or device being used.

Google Chrome browser is Google’s first step in the direction of creating an interface not just for the web and computing.

The idea is that if more users will access their data directly from the Internet as opposed to a computer?s hard drive, then Google will provide both the interface (Chrome) and Operating System (Chrome OS) that will run on many devices.

In doing so, Google is going head to head with Microsoft and Apple ? not just in the browser market but the OS market too.

The beauty of Google Chrome

It is a unique system that provides real-time automatic bookmark synchronization between all your different browsers, computers, and operating systems.

Moreover I read that it supports Unicode, so it works for bookmarks in all languages and it encrypts your bookmarks so you can securely access them anywhere in the world on any PC or via your PDA, mobile devices, RSS feeds, and publish your favorites using JavaScript.

This can change the way we deal with computers and our work. Personally, I think it could be very useful to students since we move around doing research papers, essays etc.

But then one could ask who needs another hyper-responsive utility just for synchronizing bookmarks or browser history lists when we’ve go delicious.com?

Is Google Chrome pushing a hidden agenda? What I do know is that I’ll be watching Google like a hawk and see when it officially becomes of their plans. Futureye signing out.